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Vintage Video Provides Glimpse into SD Pheasant Hunting Circa 1950s

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I was perusing Facebook the other day (I do that at least once every ten days, whether I need to or not because I have, like, at least 21 friends) when I noticed a post and video link from Pheasants Forever Marketing VP Bob St. Pierre.

The video was apparently produced by the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks department some time in the late fifties or early sixties, and this thing cranks the retro dial all the way to eleven. Seriously, if I were to call up Central Casting and say “give me a vintage 1950s hunting video” this is what they’d come up with. It has it all: that ubiquitous early 20th-Century monotone newsreel narration (Why doesn’t anyone talk like that these days?) the corny dialogue, nimrod hunting caps, buzzcuts, black plastic-framed glasses, and you even see the phrase “stag party” used in an un-ironic way. It’s awesome.

You also get to see some footage of a couple nice-looking golden retrievers flushing some pheasants for our group of Mad Men, presumably before the stag party.

This, folks, is how your granddads and dads pheasant hunted. Ask them how it’s different from hunting today. Just don’t ask them about the stag parties, because what happens in the Aberdeen, South Dakota Motor Lodge, stays in the Aberdeen, South Dakota Motor Lodge…

Anyone have links to other cool, retro upland, waterfowl or dog-training/field trial footage? I know there’s got to be a ton of it out there just waiting to be (re)discovered.